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Saturday, June 25, 2011

the details.

No wedding is complete without the little touches that make it your own. This was my favorite part of the whole wedding- and by having a longer engagement, it really allowed me spend time looking for ideas, and crafting!

Invites & Paper

I ended up using a Brides Magazine template from Michael's. Each week I would receive a new coupon for 40% off, so I would buy another piece to the whole paper set. When it was all said and done I bought save the dates, invitations, thank you card, place cards, programs, green envelopes and vellum paper. I also was able to find a wedding ribbon I liked to use for the invites and various other things throughout the wedding. Putting all these pieces together was fun, but a nightmare at the same time. Working with a home printer is never an easy task. Also, to not make them look homemade, I sprayed each invite with Preserve It! so the ink would not smear.

They turned out great, but took a lot of time.

our save the dates

our invites- I switched out the ribbon, and added the green lining in the envelope

programs!

menus- made by me!

Ceremony

For many outdoor weddings people use arches- and in fact we could have rented an arch from the company we rented chairs from. I had even read it is smart to have an arch as a focal point for the ceremony. But, for some reason I wasn't a fan of the arch. We were getting married in the most beautiful spot, and I didn't want to obstruct that view with a big piece of wood. I wanted our location to speak for itself- and I wanted the other focal point to be Ryan and I- not the arch. I also think it makes our pictures cleaner.

Since we were going for simplicity, all we did for the ceremony was have crisp and clean white chairs, and galvanized buckets with apples. The apples worked because they were the color I wanted. And by being apples, it brought an organic element- for so much cheaper than flowers. They were super easy to DIY too- my sis and I went to Costco right before we left for Monterey and picked up a few containers.

We had a sign at the entrance to the beach to point in the direction of our wedding.

For our ceremony script, I printed it up in a book from Blurb.com. Since the book/binder that Matt was going to hold, would be in every picture, I wanted it to look cute.

My favorite goodies were my paintbrushes. I had a bucket that said "brush the sand off your feet" and I had a bucket full of brushes (super cheap from Home Depot). To have them match the decor, I stamped them with my damask stamp (which I found at Target for $1) and I tied wedding ribbon to each.

We also had handmade signs to reserve the front row of seats for the fam.

Lastly, we wanted to have a kick-ass ceremony, so we kept it to a minimum and had drinks! That's right, our favorite beer- Great White & Sierra Nevada was served, as well as Pellegrino and Coca-cola. I found the cutest drink bucket, which was apple green and damask, at Target (pictured on the bottom right). Great thing is, we can still use this for future par-tay's!

Reception

For the reception- we went simple as well. The centerpieces were hurricane glasses from Ikea filled with apple's from Costco.

For our table numbers, I made little mole-skin esque books out of construction paper. Each page said "tips for the bride and groom". These became great keepsakes for us- with some handy tips!

Our gifts to the guests were re-usable shopping bags. My mom embroidered "Carmel-by-the-sea" on each bag, along with a damask-type graphic.

For our guest book, we set up our Polaroid camera (which I bought on e-bay) so our guests could snap a photo, and write a message in an old photo album I bought at a thrift store. I have since put all of our wedding cards in the album as a wedding keepsake.

Other details-

it was all about damask!

Our Cake

We loved this cake- and loved that it was black!

Flowers

As I mentioned, we had very low-key florals. Just 2 bouquets, some boutonnieres and corsages for our moms and grandmas.